#reformist muslim

[irishabdullah]

Simple desktop and mobile resources for the discerning muslim revert

Dropping the links I use to study Quran

The Noble Quran - contains 66 different languages (including transliteration). Also has good (short) summaries of many tafsir, surah/ayah/word recitation/pronunciation.

Legacy Quran - same as the first link, but only text. May be less demanding or easier to navigate on certain browsers.

Quranic Audio - same as the first link, but only audio. Has countless recitation options, from the Holy Quran itself to Taraweeh to non-Hafs recitations.

Quranic Arabic Corpus - invaluable classical arabic dictionary that let's you search by ayah, word, or root, and explains the grammar and syntax of each word, as well as frequency of usage.

Quran: A Reformist Translation - this is the translation I use to cross-reference everything I read from the other webbed sites. very well-researched, but also probably "blasphemous" by the standards of conservative Islam. considered to be of Quranist persuasion, the three authors both give a more metaphorical understanding of the Quran and debunk many common misconceptions about the Islamic faith from both inside and outside the religion. Unparalleled if you're a convert but the centuries-long debates of different Islamic schools has deterred you from exploring Gd's message.

The Prophet's Prayer - based on cross-referencing many different sunnah and hadith, the author seeks to give the most logical and accurate account to the guidelines of prayer as described on behalf of the Prophet Muhammed (peace be upon him). Great source of clarity if you're unfamiliar with navigating supplementary texts.

English Quran Audio (Part 1) (Part 2) - Saheeh International translation; great to download and listen to in your free time. I let this play while I sleep so that I may drift off and wake up to Gd's word.

Al-Azan Prayer App - privacy-focused open source adhan and qibla app. Lots of good features with plenty of customization. Be sure to download the F-Droid app store onto your phone, then install Al-Azan from there, so that it will automatically update. (F-Droid also has other great privacy apps you should check out while you're there, including Youtube and Twitch front-ends).

Noor Ul-Huda - another F-Droid app but with a customizable mobile Quran reading experience. Allows you to tag and bookmark different surahs and ayats, as well as the option to download translations of the Quran in 44 different languages. Same as the previous app, be sure to download F-Droid first in order to automatically update.

#quran #holy quran #islam #muslim #muslim revert #muslim convert #reform islam #reformist islam #reformist muslim

[muslim-radfems]

This article talks about homosexuality- perceived to a great sin in traditional Islam- from an analytical perspective using only the Quran for guidance.

Obviously, the rights and freedom of same sex attracted men and women should not be up for debate, based off of a few verses from religious books and religious ideologies whatsoever. Even if the Quran or any other religious book unequivocally stated that homosexuality is a sin and the nasty homosexuals are going to hell and burn for their crimes of loving a person...I would still support the lgb community in their fights for basic rights. Because we as humans, Muslims or not, should be capable of basic empathy. Which is dearly lacking in a lot of today's Muslims who have grown up listening to scholars treating gay people and women as less than actual human beings.

But for monotheists for whom the basic principles of the Islamic God makes sense, the traditional perspective on a lot of things can be confusing and repulsive, if you dont believe in the oppression and persecution of a group of people who had no choice in determining their sexuality and choose to give wings to their love for the same sex, causing absolutely no harm to society in any way. This article helps to alleviate that doubt, and provides a frankly refreshing perspective on the issue.

To make it clear, I do not support mainstream Islam or the way that is practiced commonly. I think it is an oppressive system and discourages all critical thinking and growth in the name of "God knows best, we just follow whatever he says". Except they are the ones deciding that God has said. They are the ones translating, explaining and conducting sermons on what they think God has said. I'm not saying my view is the only correct one, and claiming a moral high ground over the mindless people who don't question their faith. However, i do believe contemplating and questioning one's own beliefs is instrumental to strengthening our beliefs and figuring out why we believe the things we do. If our belief in God dissolves at the merest of critical thought, then maybe it deserves to be dissolved.

I hope that any person reading this, if you believe in god or once believed in god or maybe sometimes worry about "going to hell", and feel driven away and ostracized by many religions' stance on homosexuality, i hope you find some relief in this. I hope you know that you are not a sin, your existence is not a sin and the love you feel is not a sin. That homosexuality and your faith can coexist, if you want it to.

#radfem leaning #radfems please interact #radical feminism #islam #feminism #reformist muslim #progressive muslims #radfem #orignal content

[radwitchhh]

Women being forced to pretend fasting during menstruation and working as domestic slaves, so that Muslim m3n can conveniently fast during Ramadan is a patriarchal religious abuse in the name of Islam. Western liberal Muslims have no right to whitewash and deny the real life experiences of women in Muslim countries. Your modern and reformist version of religion is not the standard. Majority of women have no choice to practice it. So saying that misogyny is culture not religion is misogynist at it's core

[fatehbaz]

Was Turkey and its predecessor, the Ottoman Empire, always the land of [sedentary villages and commercial agriculture]? [...] What kind of historical processes generated this socioeconomic, political, and environmental transformation in the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Turkey? [...] Gratien [...] [narrates] a hundred-year-long (1850s-1950s) clandestine history of state-led “agrarian conquest,” villagization, and commercialization of agriculture in the muddy but fertile lowland of Çukurova (historical Cilicia) and its mountainous hinterland in southern Anatolia. [...]

The frontier in Çukurova, Gratien argues, was a “frontier of the state,” “a settlement frontier,” and an “ecological frontier.” [...] [T]he Ottoman state and its varied practices of governmentality played an engineering role in remaking the rural world, while [...] forced sedentarization (iskan in Turkish) policies were imposed on the region’s pastoralists [...] whose livelihood depended on seasonal migration between the lowlands and highlands. [...] [A] mesh of old and new [...] “[...] forms of resource extraction, and environmental understandings” appeared “in tandem with the processes of state-building [...] and commercialization.” [...]

The mobility of people connected the lowland to the highland pastures, pastoralists to livestock, migrant laborers to cotton, merchants to global capitalism, Muslim refugees to trans-imperial warfare, mosquitos to dreadful malaria, the “rebels” to the mountains, and finally technocrats to the swampy Çukurova.

---

Transhumance migration, referring to seasonal migration between northern and southern pastures, is the first and perhaps one of the most common forms of mobility embedded in this region. [...] The fresh upland air, known as yayla in Turkish, was a green sanctuary for locals [...] during the hot summer months.

During the mid-nineteenth century, the dynamic of this seasonal relationship to lowland swamps shifted with the imposition of Ottoman modernist reform policies intended to turn Çukurova into a “second Egypt” through cotton production. As a result of provincial reforms and the growing centralization capacity of the empire thanks to the Tanzimat reforms (1839-76), the Ottoman state began to forcefully settle the local pastoralist communities that were seen as obstacles to state-led agricultural development projects in the region and as a potential labor reserve for the cultivation of cotton on the “fertile lands” of Cilicia.[5] Ottoman reformists viewed “settlement and cultivation” as “the only antitode of the malarial wastelands of the Ottoman countryside” (p. 58). Gratien chronicles widespread “malaria, cholera, and other diseases” as outcomes of resettlement and villagization and argues that from the 1850s onward these [...] resulted in "high mortality" [...].

---

Though the Ottomans’ forced sedentarization policy toward pastoralists and resettlement [programs] [...] were both designed to increase the commercialization of agriculture in Çukurova, they operated differently as instruments of the imperial state. Sedentarization included state-perpetrated violence in the form of massive military campaigns. Resettlement of refugees involved the strategic settlement of new loyal citizens among indigenous communities of the region whose own loyalty to the empire was seen as suspicious. [...] During the early twentieth century, [...] hundreds of thousands of Armenians were killed during the Adana massacre in 1909 and then the Armenian genocide in 1915. With the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Armenians from their historical homelands into Syrian deserts for “putative security concerns,” Çukurova’s fertile lands, villages, and towns in Adana province were instead “permanently settled” with [...] [those] who were identified as “Turks” by the nationalist government (p. 143). This was the second wave of an Ottoman demographic engineering project that started in the 1860s [...] in a region once heavily inhabited by Ottoman Armenians and Muslim pastoralists. [...]

---

Gratien carefully investigates state-led violence against pastoralists instrumentalized by the massive military campaigns of the Fırka-i Islahiye (Reform Division). [...] By consistently incorporating folk songs, laments, and oral accounts, Gratien not only eloquently displays pastoralists’ forms of resistance and resilience against the Ottoman reform movement in Çukurova but also masterfully narrates perceptions and worldviews that have been silenced in the state archive. [...]

---

Text by: Zozan Pehlivan. "Review of Gratien, Chris. The Unsettled Plain: An Environmental History of the Late Ottoman Frontier". H-Environment, H-Net Reviews. August 2023. URL: h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=58142. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]

[loving-n0t-heyting]

I feel about far right qurad desecrators in Western Europe roughly the way I do about nazis threatening to March thru skokie: it is important, as a matter of overall principle and strategy, to defend their right to do it, but equally important as a social and political matter to denounce and shame the exercise of that right

Salwan momika and similar rightwing anti-islamic blasphemers are not, as a rule, acting out of some abstract humanist/rationalist/naturalist opposition to Muslim fideism. They are, very explicitly, promoting a terrifyingly xenophobic political movement which has—in Denmark and Sweden particularly—made discouragingly extensive progress in recent years, even among the national centre-lefts. (In Denmark the woke bleeding heart mahometan-pandering social democrats have committed to a reformist phase out of the ripped-from-a-fascist-YA-dystopia-novel ghetto system… by 2030!) for fucks sake, the avowed goal of the swedish quran stunt was a national ban on the Quran itself!! These are the bad guys, the bullets to bite for freedom of expression

And by the same coin… it is definitely wrong but it also should not be very surprising that acts like these provoke riots and inflame national tensions? That’s like, the whole fucking point. Doing graphically offensive things in front of national embassies, its an inflaming-national-tensions strategy. It’s the schoolyard bully tactic of sizing up an irritable mark to taunt until he punches you and you can point to him being a brute. Again, in general not defensible on the marks part! Don’t go around escalating to physical violence for no good reason! Sticks and stones! But my fucking hell, you play stupid games you win stupid prizes

[tamamita]

Thoughts on reformist islam/islam revival? i recently got handed flyers by some ahmadis talking about progressivism in islam and going against the patriarchy which seemed pretty cool

I don't agree with their theology and interpretations of scripture, but they're Muslims nonetheless

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Preamble

We atheists and atheist allies hereby declare that from now on, March 23rd is Atheist Day. We recognize the struggle of atheists to live authentic lives in many parts of the world. The struggle to openly affirm one’s atheism. The fear of intolerant governments, mobs, and religious zealots.

This struggle often includes the risk of professional, social and familial ostracization. Sometimes, this authenticity results in paying the ultimate price — one’s life. Many of our brethren have been brutally murdered for professing the very principles that this day represents: the freedom of and from religion, the right to be free of discrimination and persecution, and the freedom to profess one’s beliefs.

Many of us happily interact with people whom we admire and trust who unbeknownst to us, are closeted atheists. The world is full of atheists who are silent about their true convictions. Why? Simply this: a fear of reprisal and discrimination based on misinformation, ranging from the subtle to the life-threatening.

People should not be persecuted for their lack of belief in a god or a religion. That’s all we’re asking.

Some people however, believe that disagreeing with deeply held beliefs is hate. But it’s not.

We wish to remind our fellow human beings that many of the most powerful ideas — ideas that changed our world — were once heretical.

Many of the most radical thinkers and reformists in past eras were blasphemers against the established order of their day.

Freedom and Self-Determination

Atheists, just like adherents of religion, deserve the freedom to openly identify, profess and promote their views. No belief system or perspective on belief should enjoy special treatment.

Rejection of Bigotry and Discrimination

While atheism is a position on only one very narrow question — the evidence for a god or gods — we the proponents of Atheist Day also share a commitment to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

As such, to be associated with the Atheist Day campaign — whether you are a believer or not — is to necessarily reject bigotry and discrimination based on religious belief (or lack thereof), on race and on sexual orientation.

Just as you don't need to be gay to support gay rights, you don’t need to be an atheist to show your support for Atheist Day.

Awareness Campaign

A central component of Atheist Day is raising awareness of the discrimination and stigma faced by atheists around the world. Atheists are your loved ones, your friends, your doctors, your social workers, your teachers, your police officers and in short, the people in your life who are hiding in plain sight.

Our awareness campaign seeks to clear some misconceptions too. We Atheists and Atheist Allies want our fellow brothers and sisters in humanity to realize that we needn’t believe in an external force to encourage correct moral action. Isn’t true morality that which is done for its intrinsic value, and not under the threat of punishment or reward? Surely it is possible to act morally from intrinsic motivations, rather than extrinsic ones.

Many atheists would argue that our modern sensibilities, our ability for empathy, and our sense of universal human rights today often surpass the moral codes of largely subscribed-to religious scriptures of the past. Proof positive that we can live moral and ethical lives without a belief in the supernatural. This perspective also does not preclude atheists showing solidarity with religious people and their right to believe and to be inspired by their respective religious traditions.

To help atheists realize that they are not alone, we will promote a unified coming out on social media. Whether an atheist or an atheist ally, please support the campaign with the hashtag #AtheistDay.

Our Atheist Day awareness campaign is focused on removing the misconceptions, removing the stigma, and remembering the fallen. We aspire to normalize atheism so that people who are atheists no longer need live double lives.

We aspire to hold information events, public talks, marches, and embassy protests for those countries who would persecute us. Events will be organized at the city level, across the world.

Whether we march in the streets or we protest in secret, our voices will be heard. Your marching with us will encourage people in the Arab world to be steadfast. Many people in such regions of the world don't know that they have your support. Show them. Let them hear you. Stand with us.

A Coordinated Coming Out

Many who leave religion are fearful of “coming out”. For those who live in a region of the world where leaving their religion doesn’t entail a risk of physical harm, we also have a coordinated coming out campaign.

This campaign is central to Atheist Day. Even if you’ve not adopted the atheist label but have chosen to leave your religion, your conscious choice to come out is what our day represents.

We believe that people who leave a religion need not keep it to themselves for lack of solidarity. Atheist Day is your day to tell your story. To share your pride in making a conscious choice to define your own identity vis-a-vis religion.

A Celebration of Life

In addition to our awareness campaign, Atheist Day will encompass a second vital theme: a celebration of life.

This is a day for atheists especially, to meet face to face. It’s a day for atheists in hiding in many parts of the world, to connect with one another, where that can be done safely. These real world connections are vital. They help atheists overcome the feeling of isolation that need not be felt.

As this life on Earth is the one and only life that we can be certain of, we believe it wise to live this life to it’s fullest potential, and to help others who are less fortunate, also do the same.

We will host dinners, parties, concerts, and festivities across the world in a celebration of life, freedom, dignity and our common humanity. As an atheist or atheist ally, you are most welcome to join us in these celebrations.

Gratitude

We the founders and proponents of Atheist Day are grateful to our Atheist Allies. You do not need to be an atheist to be a vocal supporter of Atheist Day and an Atheist Ally.

Respect for the right to self-determination, free speech and a level playing field for ideological criticism is what we and our allies all share — even those Atheist Allies who profess a strong religious belief.

It’s not about respecting ideas; it’s about respecting people and their right to choose their own beliefs.

For our Atheist Allies across the entire belief spectrum, we are truly and deeply grateful for your support. We may not share a god-belief, but know that we see you as our brothers and sisters in humanity. Gratitude, solidarity, and love.

#Atheist Republic #Atheist Day #coming out #atheism #apostasy #apostates #ex Muslim #ex Muslims #ex Christians #ex Hindu #ex Hindus #ex jw #ex jehovah's witness #ex JWs #leaving religion #non believer #rise of the nones #religion #religion is a mental illness

[jooshthepunished]

Reminder that "Palestinian" is not a race. It is not an ethnicity which describes a race. The region was renamed "Syria Palaestina" by the Romans. The term means "Region of the Philistines" A people who were not at all indigenous to the region (Judea/Canaan) and who were also extinct long before the time Judea was renamed (1st Century). So anyone defending the term "Palestine" or its borders are defending Roman Colonization. They're "Colonizers" by their own standards.

People from the "Palestine" region are Arabs. They have always been Arabs. The overwhelming majority of these people are Islamic in religion. About 86% last I checked.

It's said, often, and accurately, that there's "no such thing as a 'radical Islamist' because Islam is already a radical religion" Part of their Prophet's doctrine is the ceaseless hatred and ultimate extermination of the Jews.

[x]

Any reformist movement would have to openly defy the orders of their own Prophet, which defeats the entire purpose of the religion. Given this, I would consider any perceived attempt at "reform" as Taqiyya, as appearing to "reform" lowers the guard of non-Muslims and builds a false sense of security, making it permissible to lie in order to achieve the goals of their doctrine, which, need I remind you, is primarily to exterminate the Jews.

There are hard facts everyone has to face about this whole conflict. One of those is that the area does indeed historically belong to the Jews, as they're actually indigenous to the region.

Another is that if we rip the region away from the majority of its current inhabitants to "give it back to its indigenous peoples" we either have to also apply that to our own country, which was also the reward of Conquest taken from indigenous peoples, or be openly and unabashedly hypocritical.

A third is that the Jews can re-Conquest their historical lands, which was indeed done to an extent in the 1940s.

A fourth is that Arabs can keep up their onslaught on Israel, because no one can really tell them not to except Israel.

Regions change hands, sometimes (often) it's bloody, people have been doing it since people became people, It's human nature. What we consider "right" is, more often than not, a social doctrine subject to change. So whether it's right is sort of irrelevant.

War crimes are a social construct. An important one, but it's just as subject to change as the concept of "right." All it takes is an amendment voted on and passed by a majority.

I say they each side has the right to duke it out and see who wins. I just don't want the U.S. to be involved in it anymore, because we've become the worst evolution of ourselves since our interjection. Its made our society actively worse and I hate seeing it.

[kemetic-dreams]

Why do people say the Almoravid dynasty was a North African dynasty even though it was a West African?

In reality it was both, because the population spanned the Sahara , the question that should be asked is ,why people, both scholars and laymen, want to edit the Tropical West Africans out of it, leaving out the Kingdom of Takrur and the volunteer soldiers of the recently Islamic Wagadu aka Ghana as part of it's foundation, and according to this passage from the book��African Dominion , the Takruri was the inspiration for this religious reformist movement .

Pls note where they started

Warjab b. Rābīs and Reform in the Sahel It has become conventional to attribute initial Islamic reform in the Sahel to the rise of the Almoravids, though their relationship to the middle Senegal valley (or Takrur) remains opaque. There arose the (likely) Pullo leader Wārjābī b. Rābīs (d. 432/1040–1), who challenged a non-Muslim, “idol (dakkūr)-worshiping” population.30 Wārjābī’s activities are usually viewed as subsidiary to those of the Almoravids, but closer examination reveals the latter’s close if not vital connection to the resources and politics of the Sahel, suggesting Wārjābī’s endeavors may have been more generative than derivative.]

[ Though Yaḥyā b. Ibrāhīm’s spiritual quest took him to Mecca and then al-Qayrawan, it is worth asking whether Wārjābī helped fire the imagination of Yaḥyā b. Ibrāhīm rather than the reverse, aiding the explanation of why the Almoravids began in southern Mauritania and northern Senegal. After all, by the time Yaḥyā b. Ibrāhīm gets under way “to proclaim the Truth (da’wat al-ḥaqq)” in 440/1048, Wārjābī b. Rābīs had been dead for eight years, having completed his own holy war.31 Instructively, two years following the capture of Awdaghust, the son of Wārjābī b. Rābīs, one Labbī, attempted an ill-fated rescue of ‘Abd Allāh b. Yāsīn’s brother Yaḥyā b. ‘Umar, under siege in the Lamtuna Mountains and eventually killed by the Banū Gudala in 448/1056–7.

Given Takrur’s earlier example and subsequent military support for the Almoravids, it is not at all clear who preceded whom. Takrur’s rise following Wārjābī b. Rābīs was meteoric, projecting power throughout the Senegal valley by the middle of the sixth/twelfth century. Al-Idrisī writes in 548/1154 that “the Takrūrī” (Takrur’s leader) possessed “slaves and soldiers, strength and firmness as well as widely-known justice.

His country is safe and calm.” Sila, the first town east from Awlil along the Senegal (at least in al-Idrisī’s scheme), “belonged to the domains of the Takrūrī,” and was “a meeting place for the Sūdān and a good market,” suggesting Sila’s redefinition under Takrur as a major entrepot. Barisa, the next town east of Sila, also paid “allegiance to the Takrūrī.” Awlil, Sila, Barisa, and Takrur composed the land of the “Maqzāra,” a term encompassing the Fulbe or Hal Pulaaren (speakers of Pulaar), Wolof, and perhaps Sereer.32 A reasonable inference is that Takrur controlled goods and communication from Awlil to the border with Ghana, creating a uniform trading zone.]

The fallacy is the racist thinking behind it. Some want to close their eyes and imagine a North Africa with no African, except the unfortunate slave, so native North Africans who are African got edited out also, so the Almoravid a movement was not an ethnic group it was a religious group that spanned the entire region, but is imagined as the opposite of what it was

#almoravid dyansty #almoravid #african #afrakan #kemetic dreams #brownskin #afrakans #africans #brown skin #african culture #north africa #north africans #sahara

[irishabdullah]

TAHMID CHECK!!!

have you praised Allah for His blessings on this beautiful day? stop what you're doing now and say,

الحمد لله رب العالمين

alhamdulillahi rabbil alamin

All praise is due to Allah, Lord of Creation

#muslim #islam #quran #surah #al fatihah #ayah #reformist islam #lgbt muslim #queer muslim

[muslumanincenneti]

55  - Mikdâm İbnu Ma'dîkerib (radıyallahu anh) anlatıyor: Resûlullah (aleyhissalâtu vesselâm) buyurdular ki: "Haberiniz olsun, rahat koltuğunda otururken kendisine benim bir hadisim ulaştığı zaman kişinin: "Bizimle sizin aranızda Allah'ın kitabı vardır. Onda nelere helâl denmişse onları helâl biliriz. Nelere de haram denmişse onları haram addederiz" diyeceği zaman yakındır. Bilin ki, Resûlullah (aleyhissalâtu vesselâm)'ın haram kıldıkları da tıpkı Allah'ın haram ettikleri gibidir"  

haram #emir #yasak #kuran #bidat #mutezili #akılcı #reformist #mealci #hadis #günlükhadis #buhari #muslim #sallallahualeyhivesellem#peygamber #islam #hadisler #hadiskitabı #kütübisitte #nesai #tirmizi #ebudavud #ibnmace #muhammed #muhammet

Ebu Dâvud, Sünne, 6, (4604); Tirmizî, İlm 60, (2666); İbnu Mace, Mukaddime 2, (12).   Ebu Dâvud'un rivayetinin baş kısmında şu ziyâde vardır: "Haberiniz olsun, bana Kitap ve bir o kadar da (sünnet) verildi." Rivayetin gerisi yukarıdaki mânada devam eder.   Ebu Dâvud'un rivayetinin sonunda şu ziyade de mevcuttur: "Haberiniz olsun (Kur'an'da zikri geçmiyen) ehlî eşeğin eti de size helâl değildir, vahşi hayvanlardan parçalayıcı dişi (köpek dişi) olanlar, keza muâhedeli olanların yitikleri de haramdır. Ancak eşya sâhibi, ihtiyacı olmadığı için, kasden terketmişse o müstesna. Bir kimse bir kavme uğradığı zaman, ona ikram etmek, o kavme vazife olur. Şayet ikram etmezlerse, o kimse, hak ettiği ikramın mislince onları cezalandırır."  

#peygamber #peygamberefendimiz #peygamberimiz #hzmuhammedsav #buhari #hzmuhammed #dua #muslim #hadis #islam

[mariacallous]

Who, exactly, is the enemy Russia has targeted in its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine? Not Ukrainians, who, as the Russian media continually remind us, don’t actually exist. Not NATO and the “collective West,” however much they might fit the bill; Russian television has been demonizing them for more than a decade, but there is little appetite for a direct confrontation. Throughout most of the war, the “Kyiv Junta” has been labeled a band of homosexuals, drug addicts, and, most prominently, Nazis. Yet somehow even Nazis are not quite evil enough. So, who is the true enemy? Could it be … Satan?

Apparently, yes. 

On November 4, Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Security Council Dmitry Medvedev, who just 15 years ago was the gadget-happy, reformist president on whom the country’s liberals pinned their few remaining hopes, gave a speech worthy of a wannabe suicide bomber: 

We listen to the words of the Creator in our hearts and obey them. These words give us our holy goal. The goal of stopping the supreme leader of hell, whatever name he might use — Satan, Lucifer, or Iblis.

As Artem Efimov notes in his excellent contribution to Meduza’s “Signal” Russian-language newsletter (all the Satanic news fit for pixels, if not print), it was Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov who, while apparently moonlighting as a demonologist on his Telegram channel, called for the “desatanization” of Ukraine. This is the sort of language we have come to expect from Kadyrov, who rails against “shaitans” so often that they may as well be one of the odd filler words that notoriously pepper most of his sentences. We not only expect Satan from Kadyrov — we’re disappointed if he forgets to mention him.

If both the Muslim Kadyrov and the Russian Orthodox Medvedev are warring against Satan, then this isn’t simply a matter of the ongoing mind meld between the Russian (Orthodox) Church and State. One need not believe in God to worry about Satan (although it certainly helps). 

The U.S. has been beset by waves of demonically-inflected hysteria since the infamous Satanic Panic of the 1980s, when a confluence of concerned parents, “experts,” and media personalities turned a few unhinged accusations of so-called “satanic ritual abuse” into a threat that stalked America’s schools and daycare centers. The officially atheist Soviet Union was spared this particular wave of hysteria, but, as Efimov points out, the moral panic over new religious movements (“cults”) in the 1990s brought satanism into the Russian popular consciousness.

By the 2000s, activists associated with the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) were ferreting out Satanists left and right. And they involved the government whenever possible. When the Moscow Education Department banned Halloween in the city schools, it claimed that the holiday promoted a “cult of death” and pointed to concerns about “rituals of Satanically oriented religious sects.” The popularity of the Harry Potter franchise put the morality police into overdrive. In December 2002, a woman filed a complaint with Moscow Prosecutor’s Office against Rosmen, the publisher of Harry Potter, for “occult propaganda” (the prosecutors declined to charge Rosmen, due to a lack of evidence).

Something was spreading throughout Russia since the collapse of the USSR, but it was not Satanism: it was the crusade against Satanism. 

This was a movement that crossed church and state boundaries long before the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The demonization of “cults” in the 1990s was an important step, but it was only in the past decade that both scholars and state actors indulged in a crucial slippage between the religious and the political. The Center for Combating Extremism, founded in 2008, fights both political opposition and unrecognized religious organizations, tacitly making them equivalent “threats.” In 2020, Roman Silantev, one of the leading experts combating new religious movements, published a book called Destructology, which provides the ideological justification for the Center’s work. For Silantev, undesirable political and social movements such as pyramid schemes, “fascist” and “antifascist” groups, and even the pensioners who insist that the USSR still exists, are structurally exactly the same as “totalitarian cults.” From here to Satanism is just a small step.

Since February 24, disaffected Russians have been asking themselves the grimly ironic question: “So, are we North Korea now, or Iran?” If the country is going to be explicitly fighting Satan, then Iran seems like the better bet. But the irony goes even deeper. There’s something about looking for Satan around every corner that is suspiciously …American.

The rise of the Russian anti-cult movement and the fundamentalist fight against secular culture are part of an ideological pipeline that leads back to the Great Satan itself, with American far-right and evangelical organizations taking a strong interest in the post-Soviet space even before Fox News became Russian television’s favorite American channel.

All of which suggests that we should not take the Russian state’s anti-Satanic zeal at face value. And yet something about Russia’s war in Ukraine has repeatedly activated theocratic, reactionary forces. In November 2014, one of the military leaders of the self-proclaimed “Luhansk People’s Republic” announced plans to forbid women from entering bars, when they should be sitting at home practicing their cross-stitching. (“It’s time to remember that you’re Russian! Remember your spirituality!”)

It’s highly unlikely that Medvedev, Putin, or anyone high up in the Russian government believes they are fighting Satan, but their beliefs matter only so much. They are providing a permission structure for fanatics who are only too happy to stamp out the devil’s work wherever they might find it. Just as Putinism has always been a delicately calibrated mix of top-down initiatives and responses to the more belligerent sentiments in Russian society, so too is this Satanic vocabulary both the logical outcome of decades of mild moral panics and the latest (and possibly last) rhetorical ploy on the part of a regime that has backed itself into a corner.

The escalation from gays to Nazis to Satan follows a kind of video game logic: keeping the players engaged means finding ever-bigger bosses for them to fight. But where can you go after Satan? One hopes that the leadership of the Russian Federation is not charting a deliberately apocalyptic course, despite the disturbing chatter about nuclear warfare and Russians “going to heaven, while their enemies just croak.” But when your enemy is Satan, there is little room for negotiation, retreat, or surrender.

All of which scares the hell out of anyone paying attention. Still, there is one cause for hope: If there is any world leader who must have vast experience in making deals with the devil, it’s Vladimir Putin.

[zwischenstadt]

The Moynihan Report met a hostile reception from many liberals and leftists who otherwise supported the goal of progressive welfare reform. By the mid-1960s, a coalition of middle-class liberals and radical leftists had united around the cause of pushing for a more generous and activist expansion of welfare than that envisaged by Johnson's rather tepid Great Society reforms. This coalition included established labor unions, welfare associations, religious charities, civil rights groups, social workers on the liberal spectrum, and, farther to the left, more radical groups such as the Black Nationalist movement, the emerging National Welfare Rights Organization, and feminist activists. Independently, these activists had developed an analysis of racial injustice that responded to precisely the kind of malaise identified by Moynihan, but whose causes they had carefully located outside of the African American community itself, in the enduring nature of structural discrimination. Many of these people responded angrily to the tone of Moynihan's report, accusing him of pandering to existing psychocultural explanations of African American oppression. It is this hostile reaction that is most often recalled in contemporary accounts of the Moynihan Report. And yet, as the historian Marisa Chappell has recently argued in some detail, the anathema surrounding Moynihan's name has tended to obscure the considerable affinity between Moynihan's family wage ideology and leftist and liberal conceptions of welfare reform at the time. The liberal and left coalition for welfare reform may have quibbled with the causes of African American disadvantage adduced by Moynihan, yet they were in fundamental agreement that any long-term solution to racism would therefore require an effort to restore the African American family and the place of men within it.

This consensus reached across the spectrum of liberal and left participants in the welfare reform movement. Reformist civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King were sympathetic to the findings of the report, while Black Muslim and Black Nationalist leaders were in frank agreement with its suggestions of pathological matriarchy and male castration. But even those on the radical labor left were receptive to Moynihan's arguments. A few years after the publication of Moynihan's report, a new kind of labor activism would erupt on Detroit's auto plants as African American workers, both men and women, adopted strike tactics outside the wage bargaining framework of the New Deal labor unions. Brought together under the umbrella of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers in 1969, these unions openly repudiated the reformist and assimilationist methods of civil rights activism on the one hand and the white New Deal labor unions on the other. But they were by no means hostile to the family wage arguments proffered by Moynihan; indeed, even while the first wildcat strikes were initiated by women, the Revolutionary Unions saw the restoration of African American manhood, via an extension of the New Deal family wage to black men, as the ultimate aim of their extralegal activism.

Melinda Cooper, Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism

#feminism #melinda cooper #neoliberalism #league of revolutionary black workers #moynihan #daniel patrick moynihan #martin luther king jr #black nationalism #civil rights #the welfare state

[muslim-radfems]

Peace be upon you sisters,

can you recommend some muslim blogs to follow in tumblr? the most i find are inactive.

also, what is your opinion on "Qur'anists"

Peace be upon you too❤️and sorry for the late reply!

I'm sorry I cant help about the muslim blogs...most ones i know are inactive too. Progressive/reformist Islam is a very niche part of tumblr apparently. I do suggest following and going through the progressive islam tag because there are some old good posts on there.

Quranism is something I agree with from a logical standpoint, even though some quranists come off condescending. The Quran guarantees its preservation, meaning the verses themselves cannot and will not be changed in time, and we as Muslims believe that. This is not to say the translation and interpretation of such verses cannot be questioned. But the original content of them is fixed. But the Quran doesn't guarantee the preservation of Hadith anywhere.

There's some research to prove how some hadith have been twisted to fit certain narratives..for example Aisha Ra's age most probably having been changed from 19 to 9. Also, some hadith contradict each other and the method of how hadith were preserved is certainly sketchy. Some hadith also make no sense and just serve to enforce arbitrary rules- they might've made sense in the context and time the Prophet spoke them but he was a regular man who couldn't make rules for the rest of time. For example, he advised women to not wear a certain type of anklet that made noise as it was the kind prostituted women were forced to wear to attract customers, and women wearing them were at higher risk of being attacked. Such a rule however makes no sense in a modern context, yet we have scholars enforcing them. If you would like i can link more sources to support these arguments so just let me know if you want them.

I think the hadith has value as historical context- they can give us clues regarding why certain verses were revealed and the situation surrounding them. But by means do i consider them holy rules that Muslims are bound to.

Feel free to ask any more doubts you might have!

#ask #islam

[beardedmrbean]

Dozens of students in Iran were hospitalized for suspected poisoning this week, the latest development in a series of cases that appear to be primarily targeted at girls’ schools across the country.

Emergency services in Pardis, on the outskirts of Tehran, transferred 37 schoolgirls for treatment on Tuesday, a school official told Iran’s semiofficial Tasnim news agency. He said the students were suffering from “mild poisoning” and added that all of the girls are expected to recover.

Separately the same day, the activist-run Human Rights Activists News Agency reported that several other female students fell ill in the city of Qom, to the south of the capital, where many of the suspected poisonings have taken place.

Such incidents have been reported in 10 to 15 cities across Iran in recent months, Abdulali Rahimi Mozafari, a member of Iran’s parliament, said Tuesday, according to the Entekhab news website. The number of affected students across the country is unclear, but Zahra Sheikhi, a spokeswoman for Iran’s Health Commission, said Wednesday that 800 students had suffered “mild poisoning” in Qom alone in recent months, the reformist newspaper Shargh reported.

While some boys also appear to have fallen ill, Iranian media report that the vast majority of cases have been at girls’ schools. No deaths have been reported.

Iran’s health minister, Bahram Einollahi, visited Qom on Tuesday, saying that the poison was “very mild” and that the students’ symptoms included muscle weakness, lethargy and nausea, the Iranian Students’ News Agency reported. According to the Associated Press, some of the children described smelling tangerines, chlorine or cleaning agents. Sheikhi, the Health Commission spokeswoman, said the poison appeared to have been inhaled.

The reason for the poisonings remains unknown. Last week, Iranian Attorney General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri ordered an investigation and said the spate of poisonings “indicates the possibility of intentional criminal actions.”

On Sunday, Iranian news outlets quoted Younes Panahi, a deputy health minister, as saying that schools were being deliberately targeted. He told journalists that the culprits “wanted all schools, especially girls’ schools, to be closed,” according to Iran’s Ettelaat newspaper. He later denied making the comments, saying he could not confirm whether the poisonings were intentional or why they had taken place.

Alireza Monadi, another member of the Iranian parliament and who serves on the education committee, also said Sunday, without providing evidence, that an “evil will and thought” behind the attacks sought “to prevent the children of this land, especially girls, from education is a significant danger and is considered very bad news.”

While education in Iran is only compulsory for children between 6 and 11, Iran’s government has a strong focus on education, with female students making up more than 50 percent of Iran’s university student bodies, according to the World Bank. Tehran has repeatedly pressed the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan to overturn its ban on girls’ education. Students in Iran are risking everything to rise up against the government

Families of the students affected in Qom, an important site of Shiite Muslim shrines and scholarship, held a protest recently to demand that authorities act to end the series of poisonings, the state-run Hamshahri newspaper reported.

The country has already been gripped by months of protests sparked by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini while in police custody for allegedly wearing a hijab improperly in public. While the demonstrations started over women’s dress, they morphed into rallies against the country’s theocratic state and joined across age, gender, ethnicity and class lines. It’s not clear at this point whether the suspected poisonings are linked to these protests.

Students have played a key role in the protests, and more than 700 of them have been arrested, according to the Volunteer Committee to Follow Up on the Situation of Detainees.

Authorities have launched a brutal response, with HRANA, the activist news agency, reporting that at least 530 demonstrators have been killed since the unrest began in mid-September. At least four protesters have been executed, while others have received death sentences.

#nunyas news

[tawakkull]

ISLAM 101: SPIRITUALITY IN ISLAM: PART 101

Sufism continues to be a growing and vibrant presence in the contemporary Islamic world. In spite of the fact that some modern reformist movements, especially Wahhabism, have attacked the legitimacy of Sufism, claiming that it is blasphemous to revere saints’ tombs or to play music or to sing as part of religious ceremonies, its appeal and impact continue to spread through Muslim majority and Muslim minority countries, including the United States. The broad appeal of Sufism’s egalitarian approach to an individual’s personal and inner journey toward God continues to resonate within the mainstream Muslim world.

Saints and Sufi orders continue to exist in the Islamic world, from Sudan to Egypt to Senegal and Muslim India. Longstanding orders such as the Qadariyya, Shadhaliyya, and Naqshabandiyya are still popular. All of these orders continue to emphasize zuhd . Yet this type of asceticism need not manifest as abject poverty, and not all Sufis throughout history have emphasized literal poverty. Many wealthy Sufi orders endowed lodges, schools, mosques, hospitals, pilgrims’ hostels, and other charitable endowments.

The principle of zuhd, of being unattached to the world, is often described by Sufis as the maxim “Die before you die.” This implies that one is no longer attuned to the transient earthly life, but has turned all of one’s attention to God, to the Divine Face. The Sufi practices a discipline aimed at the purification of the soul, tazkiyat al-nafs. This is not to say that Sufis are always insular in their communities. A Sufi ethic has always been concerned with playing a role in society at large. Festivals, saints’ days, and religious holidays in communities with Sufi lodges tend to center around the lodge itself, which serves as a site of pilgrimage for all Muslims, whether or not they are Sufi practitioners themselves.

In this way, Sufism is not entirely an inner or theoretical practice. Its moral dimensions can be found enacted in relationships with society’s downtrodden and unfortunate. Many Sufi lodges are attached to hospitals, soup kitchens, or schools funded exclusively by pious endowments called awqaf.The medieval Sufi Al-Junayd characterized Sufism as “feeling the hunger of the needy, the abandonment in the desert of the homeless, the pain of the ill and injured.” This emphasis on the poor and indigent contributed enormously to the proliferation of Sufi charitable foundations, including schools, mosques, and public fountains.

All of these types of institutions serve the wider public, as did the old institution of the ribat, a fortress frontier outpost in which Sufi missionaries and members of conquering armies resided in the early medieval period. In fact, it was the ribat that gave way to the eventual establishment of more generic Sufi lodges, which served the small Sufi community that lived in them as well as provided educational and residential services for the broader community. Sufism has long been characterized by the dual purposes, therefore, of retreat and engagement, of inner spiritual development and outer charitable works. The Sufi’s detachment from the world consists, therefore, not in denying the world in order to transcend it, but in learning how to engage with the world properly.

#allah #god #islam #muslim #quran #revert #convert #convert islam #revert islam #reverthelp #revert help #revert help team #help #islamhelp #converthelp #prayer #salah #muslimah #reminder #pray #dua #hijab #religion #mohammad #new muslim #new revert #new convert #how to convert to islam #convert to islam #welcome to islam